Longmont: St. Vrain River should be ready for spring runoff

Residents of The Greens ask city for better early warning of flood

By Scott Rochat

Times-Call staff writer

Posted:
02/19/2014 12:33:20 AM MST

Volunteer Tom Suliman walks past a pile of garbage on Columbia Drive in The Greens neighborhood Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. City officials told residents on Feb. 19 that the St. Vrain River should be ready for spring runoff, keeping the neighborhood out of harm's way. (Lewis Geyer Longmont Times-Call)

The St. Vrain River in Longmont should be able to hold enough water to keep the annual spring runoff from turning into Great Flood No. 2, city officials told residents of The Greens on Tuesday.

A packed house — and often a vocal one — listened as public works director Dale Rademacher laid out the figures in a meeting room at the Twin Peaks Golf Course. With a heavy snowpack waiting in the mountains, he said, the strongest expected water flow this spring is about 2,500 cubic feet per second, about three times normal.

That's also what a recent study says the St. Vrain can carry between Airport Road and Martin Street, Rademacher said. The area west of Airport Road is still being studied.

The meeting is the first of five that Longmont is holding for neighborhoods hard-hit by September's flood. The city's flood plans had not considered The Greens to be in danger; aerial reconnaissance during the disaster showed the St. Vrain breached its banks in multiple locations, sending some of the water along a new course.

Several residents heatedly asked why they hadn't received more warning. The neighborhood first got word to evacuate around 1 p.m., the neighbors said, even though city officials said news of the flooding had been radioed from a helicopter by late morning.

"You had warning for an hour ... but you did nothing for our neighborhood," one resident said.

Wendy McFarland said that while the city did an excellent job of showing the steps being taken to be ready for the next flood — including cameras at key spotsto monitor the river — more could be done to keep in touch with residents.

"I think if people had more time, they could have saved vehicles, they could have saved things they treasured," she said.

City officials said they would review the logs to double-check the timing of the evacuation notices. They also plan an April meeting in the neighborhood, to let residents know what progress had been made on the flood-control measures.

But there was praise, too, especially when Boulder County officials made it clear that they would push the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a more extensive repair near Pella Ponds than FEMA had recommended — and that the county would go ahead with that plan even if FEMA refused to fund it.

Meanwhile, the sheer scale of the disaster still had the power to hold an audience, including the word that 1,336 tons of debris had already been taken from the river to a landfill, with more to go.

Resident Steve Allen encouraged his neighbors to take advantage of every flood meeting they could, both to get information and to be heard.

"It will be well worth the time and effort," he said. "I'm encouraging people: if you see it in the paper, just go."